This research project is designed to explore the relationship between motivational conflict and psychological well-being and physical health. Previous research (Emmons, 1986; Emmons & King, 1988) has shown conflict between goals to be a significant concurrent as well as prospective predictor of physical symptomatology, greater levels of negative affect, and lower daily reported moods and life satisfaction. Three studies, each designed to investigate aspects of the pathological relationship between conflict and well-being are proposed. The majority of this work is directed toward further refinement of the construct of ambivalence over expressing emotion, and the individual difference measure used to assess it, the Ambivalence Over Expressing Emotion Questionnaire (AEQ). The results of this project will contribute to the growing literature on the relations between stress, personality, emotion, and illness. The first study proposed in this grant seeks to explore the differential effects of ambivalence over expressing emotion and actual emotional expressiveness on physical and psychological well-being through the use of an experience-sampling method. Study two is a comparative examination of questionnaire measures of inhibition and rumination, the two components believed to underly ambivalence. This study will also examine the effects of these emotional styles on physical well-being. The third and final study represents an attempt to validate the AEQ with physiological (i.e skin conductance levels) indicators. This will strengthen the link between ambivalence and psychosomatic illness. It is expected that the results of these studies will support the contention that conflict over emotional expression is a variable worthy of study in its own right, having implications for research on personality and health, and that the AEQ is a valid measure of that construct.